Pesticides predict Parkinson’s

A new study finds a clear link between pesticide exposure and Parkinson's …

Brains are fragile things. It doesn't take a zombie chewing on one to break it, either. A build up of abnormal protein plaques, prions, or the loss of neurons in a specific region of the brain is enough to cause very severe problems. The last example is what happens in Parkinson's Disease (PD). Dopamine-producing neurons that emanate from a region of the brain called the substantia nigra begin to die off, and when enough of them are gone, patients begin to suffer a range of symptoms, from trouble with movement to cognitive and sensory disturbances.

PD can be caused by a multitude of factors. Sometimes it's genetic, or the result of head trauma. Perhaps the world's greatest boxer, certainly its most loquacious, Muhammad Ali contracted PD from his many fights. Now a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health has found a link between pesticide exposure and PD onset. In a paper to be published later this month, the authors find that exposure to pesticides increased the incidence of PD by 70 percent. Previous research had suggested a link between pesticide use and PD, but never this clearly.

Although there are some treatments that alleviate the symptoms for a few years, they lack long-term effectiveness. Stem cell based therapies have shown remarkable results in animal models, but such treatments are a long way off in humans.

What this means for pesticide use is unclear. These compounds are used ubiquitously in modern farming, yet to all intents and purposes they are all variants of nerve poisons. It is not surprising that farmers who use sheep dip can develop identical symptoms to the spectrum of illnesses known as Gulf War Syndrome. Some might argue this demonstrates the benefits of genetically modified crops such as Bt maize. I'm not so sure.